Knollwood Community Church: Burke, VA

Star Date - Wednesday, 22 June 2011 - En Gedi & Qumran

by Brian Conaway on June 22, 2011

Stan here jumping in front of Brian to let you know that we added a pic from day four.  Our leader Danielle took our "bobbing in the Salt Sea" pic and we just received it so we are adding it as the first pic for day 5.  But really it is the last pic from day 4.  We are really floating and are not touching the bottom.  It was really relaxing.

Plus there is a bonus photograph of the sunrise over the Salt Sea taken from the roof of our hotel.  This is one of my favorites.

Back to Brian - Shalom Friends and Family! We spent our last night at the Salt (Dead) Sea resort hotel and after a short devotion at 7 AM near the beach, we headed to the oasis at En Gedi. En Gedi and Qumran are both in a desert area of Israel known as the Wilderness (think John the Baptist & Jesus' temptation). En Gedi, like most of the places we hike into, is an Israeli national park. It is an incredible place and some of Stan's pictures ( that are linked below) will help you get a feel for what we saw and where we went. From a Biblical perspective, do a 'word' search on 'En Gedi' using a Bible program and you'll find that David, while on the run from King Saul who was trying to kill him, had a chance to kill Saul who was relieving himself in a cave in En Gedi. [NOTE: we receive faith teachings frequently while on the trails but there is no way I can share all of them on this blog due to space and time]. We then headed north along the Wilderness to Qumran, the location where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. It is a very popular tourist destination and it was busy in the restaurant.  However, due to the heat not many, except from our group, ventured outside to see the excavations and caves where the jars holding the scrolls were deposited by the Essenes ( if you aren't familiar with the Essenes, 'google' them).   The scrolls are considered by many to be the most significant archeological find of all. We will see actual fragments of the scrolls in a Jerusalem museum when we get there later in the trip (Qs: what three books of the OT have the most scroll fragments? What one book of the OT have no scrolls?). We then boarded the bus for a two hour ride north out of the Wilderness, past Jericho and on into the Galilee region which will be our home base for the next 4 days.  We are staying at Kibbutz Nof Ginosar located on the North Western shore of the Sea of Galilee. We climbed from 1300' below sea level to 650' below at Galilee - out of a desert and into a sub-tropical one. The Galilee region is my personal favorite for a variety of reasons. In closing, thanks for reading about our adventure and for your prayers. Our tour mates and leaders are awesome and we've become a close group already. More tomorrow. PS: To Brennan C. - I'll write on the food and provide a picture in a future entry. On behalf of Bonnie, Stan, Billie and Larry - shalom. Final note: We are learning to follow as 'sheep'. You'll see shepards here in Israel with mixed flocks of sheep and goats. Real sheep follow and goats do their own thing. Bonnie and Billie coined a phrase at the end of one sweaty day, "We follow like sheep but smell like goats." Very true.

Click here to see more pictures.